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Wheelchair Accessible Home for Hunter and Cody

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United States
Independence, MO
Wheelchair Accessible Home for Hunter and Cody

We purchased an empty lot in Independence on March 19, 2018. We can't afford to start building....yet. Our current home is 1200 sq ft.

We have plans to build a custom wheelchair accessible ranch style home to meet Hunter and Cody's needs now and in the future. Hunter (age 18) and Cody (age 15) are happy, energetic, technology loving boys! They were both born with the recessive gene disorder Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) - Type 2. The boys' SMA affects the strength of their voluntary muscles. SMA is a progressive disease and curre

ntly there is no cure. The boys are unable to roll over, crawl, and they have never been able to stand on their own. They have both been using power wheelchairs since they were 2 years old. Hunter and Cody both have weak swallows and use g-tubes in their tummies to eat. They both developed scoliosis and have growing rods in their backs. Through networking with doctors who specialize in SMA, and parents who have navigated this disease and shared their wealth of knowledge with us, we have been able to keep the boys as strong as possible and growing! With growth comes added challenges for us as parents though. In 2014 and 2016 Hunter and Cody got new, larger wheelchairs, and those bigger chairs are making our house seem smaller! In March 2018 we bought an almost 1 acre lot here in Independence and we hope to build a custom home suited perfectly for the boys now, and into their long term futures. The new house won’t be fancy (no granite, no marble, no fireplace, no wall to wall tile) but it will have lots of empty square footage space for the boys to move around in. We need more floor space in their bathroom, and more floor space in their bedroom. We also need more floor space in the living room and kitchen so that 1 chair doesn’t have to move so the other chair can get through. The plans for the new house are just over 3,000 sq ft. Because it’s a bigger size house, the cost is higher. At this point, we wouldn’t be able to afford the payments. So we’re saving our own money, and fundraising to help us get there faster. You can keep tabs on our overall progress, and stay updated on our weekly fundraising events by following this page! There are many ways to help the cause! We are currently accepting donations of empty pop and beer cans. We’re trying to collect 20,000 lbs! This fall we’ll be selling 8 flavors of popcorn at various events around the Kansas City area. Check out our events section to find the dates and locations. We also have a Go Fund Me account if you’d like to monetarily donate. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-home-for-hunter-and-cody We truly appreciate everyone's support. We couldn't do it without you!
-Stacie and Mike

05/27/2026

The porch is clean!!! After many years of garage sales, and all the supplies that accumulate while trying to have one, I got the porch all the way clean!! Supplies have been reduced and put away. Trash has been thrown away. A bunch more stuff that was leftover from the last sale has been sold through online swap and sales. I've raised about another $1,000 for the house fund selling those leftover garage sale items. And the leftover pile is almost entirely gone! I reduced my plant supplies by 2 whole boxes (Cody especially was impressed and happy I got rid of plant stuff). It's been power washed and cleaned. And now we get to spend the whole summer enjoying the whole porch area!!

No, we are NOT having a garage sale this summer.

Yes, we are still taking in pop can donations here at the house.

Yes, we will be selling mums again in the fall. That money will go specifically toward funding a whole house generator for the new house. We'll start taking orders toward the end of July. 🌺

We hope you're all enjoying the warmer weather!!

05/11/2026

🌺Happy Mother's Day to all you moms!🌺

These 2 are my heart and soul! I'm so blessed and honored to their mom. I would do anything for them! 💕

We spent most of the day today playing one of my favorite games on the Switch called "Overcooked." It's a cooperative game, so we win together or we lose together. (That's always better for mom, otherwise I lose all the time LOL 🤣) The game gives you customer orders and you have to cook the food they ordered in a timely manner and get so many orders in before the time runs out. BUT....these are crazy kitchens. The level in the photo has lava between the 2 sections of kitchen and you die if you land in it. There are levels with ice floors where your character slides. There are levels where you're each in your own section and you have to pass food to the person whose section has the right utensils to cut or cook it. When you're cooking things, if you don't get them off the heat when the timer says they're done, then your kitchen can start on fire! Yes, we use the fire extinguisher quite often. And in some kitchens, the countertop workspace even shifts locations every minute or so. It gets a little crazy. But we enjoy it :)

We hope you all had a great day too!

04/03/2026

🤩🤩TRIVIA ANSWER🤩🤩
We asked you to guess how many pounds of empty pop and beer cans you think we've collected since around Aug 2016 until now.

2016-2017 profits went to the transit van (which we still use)
2018-2026 profits have gone to the new house fund

Answer: about 65,000 lbs of empty pop and beer cans!! 🥳

With it taking about 30 cans to make 1 pound, that's about 1,900,000 empty pop cans

If you add in the other kinds of metal we have recycled from other items in addition to the pop and beer cans, the total rises to about 104,000 lbs of metal items recycled in all

YES, we are still taking in pop cans. You can drop them at the house anytime. Thank you to those who continue to save them for us!!

Reminder that NO we are NOT taking in garage sale donation items. NO Garage Sale this summer. We are swap and selling a few items on Edwards Online Garage Sale if you want to join and see what's for sale.

🐰🐰 Happy Easter weekend!! 🐰🐰

03/31/2026

🤩🤩 TRIVIA!! 🤩🤩

We started collecting empty pop/beer cans back in August 2016 when we were fundraising for the boys' transit van (which we're still using).

The pop/beer can collecting continued from fall 2017 until today to help us put funds toward the new accessible home.

We were curious about our overall effort totals since 2016.

HOW MANY POUNDS of POP CANS DO YOU THINK WE'VE COLLECTED and METAL RECYCLED SINCE Aug 2016??
❓❓🤷‍♀️🤔❓❓
(It takes on average about 30 empty cans to make 1 pound)

Make your guess below 👇👇👇 We'll tell you tomorrow night

03/14/2026

Cody and Hunter are outside enjoying the 70 degree weather today!!!! You know, before we get SNOW tomorrow. ❄️🤣❄️

We wanted to share that this summer we will ‼️NOT‼️ be taking in garage sale donations. We appreciate everything you've donated the last many years, but we have decided NOT to have a sale this year. We're going to focus on clearing out the remaining leftover sale items, deep cleaning through more of our own stuff, organizing medical paperwork, and breaking down scrap metal items and cleaning out the garage. We'll be listing items on our page called "Edwards Online Garage Sale" if you want to request to join and see what we're clearing out.

In terms of the house build, we're holding steady where we are for a bit. We're still adding as much of our own income as we can, and letting the interest work for us. Today's political climate makes me, Stacie, nervous. I worry about tariffs. I worry about ICE and construction crews. I worry about my job as the boys' PCA and Medicaid cuts that are starting to take effect. Once you start a large house build, there's no pausing because things changed. You're committed at that point. And right now seems like an unstable time to commit to something so large that we've worked so hard for. We'll keep you in the loop!

But for now, we're NOT taking garage sale donations.
We are still collecting empty pop/been cans if you want to drop them off on the side of the house. THANK YOU to all who continue to donate their empty cans. ❤

02/26/2026

Reunited at last after almost 3 months!!

We've had a crazy winter with our blue parakeet Scooter.

On Dec 5 Scooter (our blue parakeet) was in our entryway flying like normal. Banana was already in his cage for the night and we were all in the kitchen. So she was alone. Something happened and we found her struggling to perch with a broken right leg. She got a leg wrap on Dec 6. And we started housing her in the very top corner of her cage in a smaller box (2 sides cardboard walls, 2 sides wire frame of her cage).

Dec 27 - She got the leg wrap off. There's not much info out there on how to "rehab" a parakeet. 🤷‍♀️ We weren't careful enough, and probably gave her too much freedom to fast.

Jan 2 - We took her in for what appeared to be a right wing injury and found out she broke her right wing. So she was wrapped again and spent 3 more weeks in the smaller box for safety. 😭

Jan 23 - We took her in to get the wing wrap off. And after learning our errors after her leg wrap we were not about to just let her fly free again. So we built a cardboard floor and started by giving her only 10 inches and short perches she could "hop" up onto. We wanted her to practice with the leg and the wing but not drop too far if she fell. After a week we lowered the floor to 12", and then another week to 15", and then another week later to 18". Her footing became more stable. Her jumps turned into short flights. We saw her holding on to branches and flapping her wings but not going anywhere just to regain strength.

Feb 24 - We felt she looked pretty good and we let her out of the cage. She did 1 big flight loop around the room and I think that surprised her. LOL And maybe wore her out. Then she did shorter flights from her playground stand to her cage top. And after about 1 hour she flew back into her cage so we closed the door behind her for the night and called the first day a success.

Feb 25 - We let her out again for day #2 and she did about 5 big flights around the room and made it about 2 hours. And the best part was that both Hunter and Cody got to hold her again!! That was a long 2 1/2 month wait!! She gave them both neck nibbles and I think she was happy to be with them again.

And now we hope for no more broken legs or wings!! 🐦

01/24/2026

Missouri Friends - ‼️‼️ HELP ‼️‼️

The "Big Beautiful Bill" is about to impact us (as predicted).

Missouri Governor Kehoe presented his budget. It includes CUTS to Self-Directed Supports (SDS). Hunter and Cody use SDS. This provides their Medical Personal Care Assistants. I fill some of their hours - so it's part of our family income (I've only been able to do this since they were 18 years old). And we have other PCA who help me travel with the boys to medical appts and other outings. And they help provide the boys' needs so we can get other things done around the house. Kehoe's budget proposes cutting $5-$10 from the hourly wage for SDS personnel. This impacts our family income, and it impacts the pay our other PCA would receive.

PLEASE spend some of this cold, snowy weekend contacting the MO senators and representatives! ❄️❄️❄️

You can find your legislators here:
https://www.senate.mo.gov/legislookup

Click a senator or representative and then when their page opens find their "Contact us" information. On some pages you can copy and paste a form message right onto their website. Others you can copy their email address and copy the message into an email. Then go back and pick the next person.

‼️Here's a message you can copy and paste:

I am writing to urge you to protect Missouri’s Self-Directed Supports (SDS) program from the cuts proposed in the Fiscal Year 2027 budget.

SDS is not a luxury. It is the only way thousands of Missouri families are able to keep their loved ones with disabilities and medical complexity safely at home instead of being forced into institutional care. Families who rely on SDS are already stretched beyond their limits. Many parents and guardians provide around-the-clock care for children and young adults with autism, serious medical conditions, and intellectual and physical disabilities. Because parents and legal guardians cannot be paid as Personal Assistants for their own children under 18, these families are required to hire outside help — even when they are barely able to afford groceries, rent, or utilities.

The proposed SDS cuts — reducing Personal Assistant funding and hourly wages and eliminating Community Specialists and Individualized Goods and Services — would make it nearly impossible to recruit or retain qualified caregivers. This will not reduce need. It will only push more families into crisis, burnout, debt, and ultimately institutionalization. These cuts do NOT save money. They shift the burden onto families until they fail — and when families fail, the state pays far more for facilities, emergency placements, and long-term institutional care.

We are asking you to do what is fiscally responsible and morally right: Protect Self-Directed Supports, protect in-home Personal Assistant funding, and preserve Community Specialists and Individualized Goods and Services.

Missouri families deserve the chance to care for our loved ones at home with dignity, safety, and stability.

01/21/2026

CODY'S NEW WHEELCHAIR PROGRESS.........👩‍🦼

April 16, 2025 - Cody got measured to order a new power wheelchair

Over many months we dealt with insurance appeals

October 21, 2025 - Cody's new power wheelchair got dropped off at our house so we could customize his back rest foam and start to get his seat, foot tray, and arm rests in position. Cody struggled having enough strength to push the joystick forward all the way.

December 4, 2025 - They brought out a modified joystick with much less resistance. Broke something reassembling it and had to order a new one. They ran out of time to do very many adjustments to the settings on how the chair drives (how fast it turns, how fast it speeds up, how fast it goes in reverse, etc - all things that are GREAT that they can be adjusted, but they can only be adjusted when they plug in their programmer - you can't adjust them yourself)

January 20, 2026 - Returned with new joystick and installed it. Spent almost 2 more hours modifying the driving settings to get it just the way Cody wants it to be.

Cody finally spent 3/4 of a day in the new chair today.
And the chair FINALLY clocked its first 1 mile driven.
Only took 3 months of it mostly sitting in our house to finally reach 1 mile.

Hopefully tomorrow is his first FULL day in the new chair. And maybe he'll hit mile 2 already! 🤣

10/29/2025

🥳🎉🎈HAPPY 22nd BIRTHDAY to HUNTER!! 🥳🎉🎈

10/09/2025

A small 6 inch humidifier for a bipap machine that will humidify a few cups of water over 12 hours - $300-$500. 😔

A WHOLE HOUSE duct mount humidifier that will put out 12 GALLONS of water a day - $280.

See the PROBLEM!!!!

Address

3008 Englewood Terrace
Independence, MO
64052

Telephone

816-252-6372

Website

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